


We Are Unsung Hymns

by ladyofstardvst



Category: DCU (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Titans (TV 2018)
Genre: Alcohol, Angst and Feels, Blood and Injury, Character Study, Loneliness, Swearing, cute poetry recitations, this is a TIME folks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-17 23:40:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28982763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyofstardvst/pseuds/ladyofstardvst
Summary: one of those, "i know you're bleeding out on my table right now but after i've saved your life, we REALLY need to have a serious conversation about what the heck we're actually doing" things.based within Red Hood and the Outlaws, new 52 version.
Relationships: Jason Todd/Reader, Red Hood/Reader
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28





	We Are Unsung Hymns

**Author's Note:**

> havent written in a while so im a bit Rusty, but i wanted to do something a little different. this is a character study of sorts, maybe a little peek into a Tougher Moment about being with someone - cough cough a vigilante - and. yeah i dont know how to describe this actually but theres FEELINGS and theres a LOT of them.

Silence, to you, meant many things.

It was the soft hours of dawn, honey golden light streaming through curtained windows. It was the _hush_ in your soul after a day so divine it felt more like a dream than anything else. Silence was the eye of a hurricane, the calm before the storm.

Sometimes, it was sinister. Silence meant unknown things seeping into hairline cracks left unguarded when things had been going _good_ , going _smooth_ , going _so well_ you forgot life could be anything else, forgot that surprises still existed.

A day of silence had melted seamlessly into two, then drew slowly into four, even five. It had grown harder to keep your mind from straying, to keep yourself focused on the world in front of you and the people beside you. It was easier during the day as most things seemed to be, but, _well_.

Things were always fine, until they weren’t fine at all.

An arm of the couch, a corner chair. The windowsill cleared of clutter for seamless exits and entries under the cover of night – they all became prime places for dreaming and thinking, for worrying and waiting. For wondering if you were even _allowed_ to be this worried, this affected, because it wasn’t like you and Jason Todd were technically _dating_ , after all.

It was like being suspended in a sort of limbo, a liminal space; floating at a fixed point in space and time where you danced around whatever it was that had grown and blossomed so beautifully between the two of you.

Also known as: a purgatory, of sorts.

So you scrolled through old messages, camera rolls, curled up in the windowsill with a blanket and city lights for company, with city life for a soundtrack. This all dispelled the tension, the sporadic bouts of cracked composure; reliving memories that reminded you of his warmth, of his smile, focused on the ones that surrounded you with comfort. He would come home because he _always_ came home, in one way or another – a little rumpled and tired, or a canvas stained with his journey.

You crawled into bed, grazed fingertips feather-light across his pillow, then dreamed.

Of course Jason was fine. Probably.

-

A few days later, you had become familiar with this feeling, you realized. Adjusting, finally, to all of _this_ from the past, the present. This was your life now, and patience was a virtue. Resilience had to become one too.

Life went on.

And then you received a message, phone vibrating while out on an errand. Twilight was fast approaching, and you tried to race against the heavenly hues as they melted into deep peony pink, bled into bruised violet, became that deep navy blue always mistaken for midnight black.

Night was unpredictable, after all, and this one was no different.

_{ Tuesday, 5:36 pm. From: Roy Harper_

_Coming in hot }_

“Oh,” you said, startled. Your feet stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, crowded and loud – then suddenly, abrasively silent – but you began to move again, when your mind remembered what, exactly, that phrase meant. “ _Oh_.”

You were home in record time. Everything happened fast, after that.

The first aid kit was in your hands within seconds, contents already finding their way onto a table, hands acted on muscle memory as they pulled a bottle of liquor, half full, from the cabinet as your front door flew open, ricocheted off the wall.

You didn’t even flinch.

“ _In here_!”

Heavy, shuffled footsteps followed your voice. Roy and Kory hauled Jason onto the cleared space, and you didn’t bat an eye at that either.

His gear was off already, the clothes worn underneath already stained deeper, darker, saturated in places. His white streak wasn’t so white anymore, either. The harsh overhead light hid no details, and you wished this sort of scene still made you cringe, still made your breath catch and your brow crease in worry.

No one ever thought about what changed within _you_ , when the life you crafted was suddenly full of superheroes and vigilantes. It’s never just learning how to stitch, how to help clean fancy bulletproof kevlar, or your rugs by extension. No, some changes ran too deep for anyone to see them, except for you, in moments like these.

Jason’s eyelids fluttered open, closed, rinse, repeat. He groaned, swore brutally when you began to clean up his wounds; you had learned a thing or two by this point, and this was nothing you had not handled before. Kory and Roy held him down while you worked, while you stitched and cleaned and bandaged.

Your routine was a well oiled machine. Everything slowed down after that.

“So this is what it takes for you to answer my messages,” you said, voice loud in the fresh silence, tone caught between a soothing murmur and a sardonic dig. “Just get yourself mortally wounded, avoid all that ‘ _don’t worry, I’m alive_ ,’ small talk.”

Jason swats away his Outlaws, breathed a cuss as he pushed himself unsteadily upright. He tells them to wait in the jet, and they listened only after you shrugged your indifference.

“ _Mortally wounded._ I thought you just saved my life,” he tried to joke, but this time it didn’t quite land. Not with his voice so rough and his blood on your floor.

“Take what you need on your way out,” you offered to his friends (yours too, now, you supposed). A balm in contrast to Jason’s demand.

You shared a look with Roy and Kory before they shut the door behind them.

“Rarely a dull moment.” Jason continued, more to himself than to you. He picked up the bottle of liquor within arms reach. The cap screwed off easy and he took a drink, then another while you hid the bloody dressing in the trash.

You swore you felt every emotion under the sun in the next seconds that passed. You were careful not to overwhelm either of you with any of them.

“Why didn’t you go to the Manor? You know Alfred does a better job than I do.” your fingers grabbed the bottle cap, played with it while your heartbeat rose and rose and rose. Jason probably heard it from across the room.

You knew the answer of course, at least the one he always told you.

He was quiet this time, though. Tired eyes left yours in favor of looking out the window, curtains still wide open to the prying eyes of nightfall. He went over to close them. “You never told me, but you were worried.”

It was a small truth; he had grown to trust you with those.

You wanted to smile, but you pulled a glass down from the cabinet, filled it with water and took it to Jason instead. Tugged the bottle gently out of his hand, replaced it with the glass.

He huffed a laugh, breath hitching when the movement pulled at stitches. Jason shifted his attention back to the city beyond, peeking behind the curtain every so often. His indifference to the last twenty minutes, the last two weeks-

Y ou ventured out, turn ed the words over in your mind as you spoke them. “I don’t want to ruin your dramatic return.”

“But _?”_

“Being temporarily _ghosted_ gives a person time to think.”

His lips twisted into a smirk, eyes bright. “ _Does_ it _?”_

“Jay.” you had grown careful with your words, with their delivery, but they always said fortune favored the bold. _“_ I _know_ you’re not my knight in shining armor - _”_

Jason snorts, took a drink. You were half tempted to push him out the window.

“- and I’m the _farthest thing_ from royalty locked in a tower,” he kept his eyes to the streets, but yours could never leave him again. They didn’t _want_ _to,_ now that he was here in front of you, acting as if he never left. “But it feels . . . it feels like we’re in a fairy tale, sometimes, you know? And then I don’t hear from you for weeks, or you come home with a _bullet_ lodged in your _shoulder_ , and I can’t help but wonder, ‘What the _actual hell_ am I _doing_?”

Jason looked at you then, expression closing off, bright blues steeled. “What _are_ you doing?”

You don’t know, and you tell him that too.

But you were still here, and you hadn’t told him to leave. He knew that, and you could see him begin to remember, see him begin to let the tension ease up _just enough_ to be casual.

He said nothing before he stole the breath from your lungs, just like he always does.

“’ _Death and love are yet contending for their prey.’_ ” he quotes, and you allow yourself that small smile then, moving close enough to touch him, for him to touch you.

You wondered how long it would take, for him to start quoting a poet. Little did he know, you spent enough of his time away reading his favorites to feel closer to your anti-hero, and, well. At long last, two could play that game.

“’ _Though storms may break the primrose on it’s stalk, though frosts may blight the freshness of it’s bloom, yet spring’s awakening breath will woo the earth, to feed with kindliest dews it’s favorite flower, that blooms in mossy banks and darksome glens, lighting the green wood with it’s sunny smile._ ’”

Jason’s grip on the glass tightened; he had to look away, because – _what the fuck._

Shelley always had a way with words, but hearing them spoken in your voice, so raw and _practiced_ with that _glint_ in your eye -

_Oh_.

The expression he wore now – it was the most real, the most wholeheartedly _Jason_ , you had ever seen. He cleared his throat. “That’s not even the same poem.”

A quiet laugh fell obnoxious and graceless through your lips, and you couldn’t stop it.

“I’ll work on that one next time you leave me.”

Jason Todd pulled you into his arms then, hid his smile in your shoulder as you held him tight, and held him _close_.


End file.
